Apple last night held its annual Apple Design Awards ceremony at WWDC, recognizing twelve applications for excellence in design and innovation across four categories: Student, iPhone, iPad, and Mac. All eligible applications were required to be available via either the iOS or Mac App Store.

This year's winners come from a range of genres, from games to news to books to music and beyond. In terms of price, the winners range from the free Pulse News Reader for iOS to the $49.99 Capo for OS X.

As part of a focus on iOS at last year's conference, Apple did not include Mac applications in the Apple Design Awards competition. But with OS X Lion playing a prominent role in this year's event and the Mac App Store gaining momentum, Mac applications returned to the ballot this year.

I agree that Osmos for iPad is a winner, its beautiful and addictive. Its not just some easy game to pass time, it a great buy. I've been playing it for a few weeks and have beat almost all of it, but very fun to play.
Highly recommend it.

Pretty soon it will be impossible to load software onto your Mac that doesn't arrive via the App Store. Steve's dreams of making the Mac a closed ecosystem are almost complete. Nothing that isn't controlled by Apple will be allowed to exist on your Mac. In order to maintain control of your Mac you will need to jailbreak it, like an iPhone.

Pretty soon it will be impossible to load software onto your Mac that doesn't arrive via the App Store. Steve's dreams of making the Mac a closed ecosystem are almost complete. Nothing that isn't controlled by Apple will be allowed to exist on your Mac. In order to maintain control of your Mac you will need to jailbreak it, like an iPhone.

My entire goal as a developer isn't money or fame or notoriety...it is to win one of these. That is the pinnacle of achievement for me personally, and what drives me to develop iOS and Mac applications.

Pretty soon it will be impossible to load software onto your Mac that doesn't arrive via the App Store. Steve's dreams of making the Mac a closed ecosystem are almost complete. Nothing that isn't controlled by Apple will be allowed to exist on your Mac. In order to maintain control of your Mac you will need to jailbreak it, like an iPhone.